"October Lights and Fields, Pt. 1"

Burlington, NC ambient duo Lost Trail deconstruct source material captured at will from the town and surrounding landscape to form miniature vignettes, highlighting the beauty in nature's imperfect abstractions. "October Lights and Fields, Pt.1", taken from their new cassette on French label Carpi, is a neat summary of their overarching methodology: a garbled transmission of female speech begins in clear view, before being carried away across an open clearing by a slow swell, devolving into static before drifting out of sight completely.

Vague voices resembling piano chords cycle through a genteel ambient passage of remarkable calm, the stillness punctured only by an unidentified springing in the right channel as urban static rises and falls in the left. The pattern becomes trance-like, akin to watching pylons reflected in frosted windows on a car ride through a particularly peculiar stretch of countryside. The low rumble of an engine marks the final destination, the din of an approaching carnival, rich with children's laughter; a somnambulant stumble through the soundworld brought to an abrupt close.